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Ruth King

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

BRAVO, TONY ABBOTT, FOR CALLING OUT GREEN FAKERY MELANIE PHILLIPS

By on October 21st, 2017

The Australian politician Tony Abbott has delivered a really terrific speech on the AGW scam to the Global Warming Foundation. What was so good was that he placed the fake science of anthropogenic global warming theory squarely in its correct and all-important context – the suicidal attack by the west upon its own civilisation and the principles underpinning it, including the pursuit of rationality and evidence-based inquiry. Here are some extracts:

“In Britain and Australia, scarcely 50 per cent describe themselves as Christian, down from 90 per cent a generation back. For decades, we’ve been losing our religious faith but we’re fast losing our religious knowledge too. We’re less a post-Christian society than a non-Christian, or even an anti-Christian one. It hasn’t left us less susceptible to dogma, though, because we still need things to believe in and causes to fight for; it’s just that believers can now be found for almost anything and everything.

“Climate change is by no means the sole or even the most significant symptom of the changing interests and values of the West. Still, only societies with high levels of cultural amnesia – that have forgotten the scriptures about man created “in the image and likeness of God” and charged with “subduing the earth and all its creatures” – could have made such a religion out of it.

“There’s no certain way to regain cultural self-confidence. The heart of any recovery, though, has to be an honest facing of facts and an insistence upon intellectual rigour…

“There are laws of physics; there are objective facts; there are moral and ethical truths. But there is almost nothing important where no further enquiry is needed. What the “science is settled” brigade want is to close down investigation by equating questioning with superstition. It’s an aspect of the wider weakening of the Western mind which poses such dangers to the world’s future.

“Physics suggests, all other things being equal, that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide would indeed warm the planet. Even so, the atmosphere is an almost infinitely complex mechanism that’s far from fully understood.

“Palaeontology indicates that over millions of years there have been warmer periods and cooler periods that don’t correlate with carbon dioxide concentrations…

“The growing evidence that records have been adjusted, that the impact of urban heat islands has been downplayed, and that data sets have been slanted in order to fit the theory of dangerous anthropogenic global warming does not make it false; but it should produce much caution about basing drastic action upon it.”

Do read it all.

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NATIONAL NEWS USA Comments turned off

WHY ARE FEDERAL BUREAUCRATS BUYING GUNS AND AMMO? $158 MILLION SPENT BY NON-MILITARY FEDERAL AGENCIES By Adam Andrzejewski

By on October 21st, 2017

We live in a dangerous world. For the 70,000 officers at Homeland Security and the 40,000 officers within the Department of Justice, proper training and equipment are vital to their daily law enforcement duties. Over a nearly two-year period – the last years of the Obama administration (FY2015 – FY2016), these law enforcement agencies spent $138 million on new guns and ammunition. That seems reasonable.

What’s curious, however, is that traditionally administrative agencies spent more than $20 million. Four notable examples:

1) The 2,300 Special Agents at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are allowed to carry AR-15’s, P90 tactical rifles, and other heavy weaponry. Recently, the IRS armed up with $1.2 million in new ammunition. This was in addition to the $11 million procurement of guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment procured between 2006-2014.

2) The Small Business Administration (SBA) spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to load its gun locker with Glocks last year. The SBA wasn’t alone – the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service modified their Glocks with silencers.

3) The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has a relatively new police force. In 1996, the VA had zero employees with arrest and firearm authority. Today, the VA has 3,700 officers, armed with millions of dollars’ worth of guns and ammunition including AR-15’s, Sig Sauer handguns, and semi-automatic pistols.

4) Meanwhile, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agents carry the same sophisticated weapons platforms used by our Special Forces military warriors. The HHS gun locker is housed in a new “National Training Operations Center” – a facility at an undisclosed location within the DC beltway.

Last year, we released our OpenTheBooks.com Oversight Report: The Militarization of America in an editorial published with former-U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn at The Wall Street Journal. Our report quantified the $1.48 billion spent by 67 non-military federal agencies on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment from 2006-2014.

This week, our organization at OpenTheBooks.com updated our data to include gun and ammo purchases over fiscal year 2015 and a partial FY2016. Spending on guns and ammo at 58 non-military federal agencies – including 40 regulatory, administrative agencies – amounted to $158 million.

The continued growth of the federal arsenal begs the question: Just whom are the feds planning to battle?

More examples of agencies amassing firepower over the last two years:

Loading the Gun Locker – Federal agencies spent $44 million on guns, including an “urgent” order for 20 M-16 Rifles with extra magazines at the Department of Energy ($49,559); shotguns and Glock pistols at the General Services Administration ($16,568); and a bulk order of pistols, sights, and accessories by the Bureau of Reclamation whose main job is to build dams, power plants, and canals ($697,182).

Buying Bullets in Bulk – The government spent $114 million on ammunition, including bulk purchases by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ($66,927); the Smithsonian ($42,687); and the Railroad Retirement Board ($6,941). The Social Security Administration spent $61,129 on bullets including 50,000 rounds of ammunition plus 12-gauge buckshot and slug ammo.

The EPA special agents purchased ammunition for their .357 and 9mm revolvers and buckshot for their shotguns. While Bernie Sanders claimed that the biggest adversary to the United States was climate change, the EPA stood ready to fight in ways we couldn’t have imagined.

Hollow-Point Bullets – Despite being outlawed by the Geneva Convention, federal agencies spent $426,268 on hollow-point bullets, including orders from the Forest Service, National Park Service, Office of Inspector General, Bureau of Fiscal Service, as well as Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Scott Pruitt Ends an Obama Administration Abuse of Power The EPA administrator has announced he will end the ‘sue and settle’ scheme implemented by his predecessors. By Rob Gordon & Hans A. von Spakovsky

By on October 21st, 2017

There’s a new day dawning at the Environmental Protection Agency. On October 16, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt announced that he is pulling the plug on the “sue and settle” strategy his predecessors used to impose new regulations and funnel large amounts of cash to their allies in the environmental movement.

Under President Obama, the sue-and-settle gambit was raised to an art form. The administration would invite special-interest groups to sue the EPA over a regulation that it wanted to change but couldn’t, at least not expeditiously. Instead of fighting the lawsuit, the EPA would then almost immediately surrender, agreeing to settle. Inevitably, the settlement entailed consenting to whatever outrageous demands were being made by the agency’s handpicked “adversary.”

As Pruitt noted, this tactic allowed the Obama administration to “circumvent the regulatory process set by Congress,” avoiding the requirements of public notice that are supposed to give citizens and industry a chance to comment on changes in existing regulations or proposed new ones. Under the settlements that resulted, the EPA would often commit to imposing changes that went far beyond what the law required, short-circuiting statutory deadlines and timetables along the way. And even though the EPA settled the friendly suits in record time, it still paid tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to cover the plaintiffs’ legal bills. Between 2009 and 2012, the EPA chose not to defend itself in 60 such lawsuits. In each case, the agency agreed to settle on terms favorable to the advocacy groups, according to a 2013 report of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. These “sue and settle” lawsuits resulted in more than 100 new federal rules estimated to impose $100 million in annual regulatory-compliance costs.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of the laws that proved especially ripe for friendly lawsuit abuse. It attracted many so-called “deadline” lawsuits, in which plaintiffs sue the government for failing to meet a deadline — like responding to a petition to add a species to the endangered list.

For example, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to re-declare a bird found on the Pacific island of Tinian as endangered. A 90-day clock started ticking as soon as the petition was filed. This particular bird had already been placed on the endangered-species list once, when the USFWS officials misinterpreted a reported sighting of 40–50 Tinian monarchs as being a population estimate for the entire island. In fact, the island teemed with tens of thousands of the birds. Eventually, the agency recognized its blunder; it disingenuously proclaimed the bird “recovered” and removed it from the endangered list.

Among the reasons the CBD cited in arguing that the bird should be put back on the list is that its small range — Tinian is roughly 40 square miles in size — makes it susceptible to “stochastic” — a fancy word for “random” — events that could supposedly wipe it out. But the Tinian monarch population has proved plenty tough. During World War II, the birds survived 43 days of naval bombardment in advance of the U.S. amphibious landing on the island. In the day before the marines hit the beach, Navy battleships shelled the island with hundreds of rounds from 14- and 16-inch guns; the Army hit it with more than 7,000 artillery rounds, and American warplanes dropped over 100 tons of ordinance — including napalm. Somehow, the Tinian monarchs survived not only all this but also the subsequent ground battle, a typhoon, and the introduction of a prolific shrub that took over 40 percent of the island’s forested areas. The bird was reported to be “abundant” shortly after the war.

Nevertheless, in September 2015, USFWS determined that CBD’s petition to re-add the bird to the endangered list “may be warranted” and ordered a status review for the species. This started another clock ticking.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Quo Vadis? The Philosophical, Spiritual Floundering of Europe in 2017 Where Christianity and cultural identity are declining in tandem By Garland Tucker

By on October 21st, 2017

During my recent vacation to Scotland, the National Centre for Social Research released a major new survey, which documented the continuing decline of Christianity in the U.K. The headline read: “Non-believers outnumber the faithful by widest margin yet.” This fall has been driven primarily by young people. Of those between 18 and 24 years old, 62 percent have no religion. The figures for the Church of England were devastating: The proportion of the population describing themselves as Anglican has dropped from 30 percent in 2000 to 15 percent today — with just 3 percent of 18- to-24-year-olds. In Scotland, church attendance has fallen by over half in the past 30 years.

As the import of this survey was sinking in, the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, weighed in with a sadly telling reaction. Noting the alarming decline in young believers, he blasted the inequities of Britain’s capitalistic system, which he perceives as “failing our children.” If warmed-over socialism is all the church can offer young people, it’s no wonder they are saying “no thanks” in record numbers. How sadly ironic that the ideas of Adam Smith are criticized by someone who should fully understand capitalism’s unmatched contributions to the improvement of mankind. No economic system in the history of man has done more to lift humans, all over the globe, from poverty.

Welby should also know that it was capitalism, born of competitive innovation and consumer choice, that rebuilt Europe after World War II. The freedom to pursue personal opportunity gave life to a European rebirth. And it should be acknowledged that the sacrifice of young Americans and European allies helped make it possible. The evil of Nazi Germany, and the false ideas it stood for, were defeated because good people were willing to give their lives defending freedom on foreign soil. Why did they fight? Because the Allies shared a common view of the world — a common culture, if you will. It is important to establish that “culture” is not defined by race or country of origin; it is defined by the foundational ideas shared by each individual in a society. Europe’s cultural identity is now in question.

In Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe, the author offers a sobering assessment of modern Europe and raises unsettling questions about the future. “At any time the loss of all unifying stories about our past or ideas about what to do with our present and our future would be a serious conundrum,” Murray writes. “But during a time of momentous societal change and upheaval the results are proving fatal. The world is coming into Europe at precisely the moment that Europe has lost sight of what it is.” Most significantly, Murray questions whether Europe is still Christian. He cites the absence of any mention of Christianity in the European Union’s new constitution, written in 2000, despite the efforts of Pope John Paul II and his successor. The EU instead wraps itself in high-flown rhetoric about “human rights” without any acknowledgment of their source.

Murray traces this crisis of identity back to the late 19th century, to two seminal events. First, the textual criticism of the Bible, originating in Germany and spreading throughout the West, undermined the Biblical foundation of Western Christianity. The second seismic blow occurred simultaneously, with the development of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Whereas it had been a foundational belief that a divine, awe-inspiring plan was behind all of civilization, it suddenly was widely held that science — not faith — held all the answers.

It is not difficult to see the manifestations. In Scotland, the landscape is littered with beautiful old churches that have fallen into disrepair or been recycled into some secular service. I had barely set foot on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh before being confronted with a magnificent stone church which now serves as the “Visitor Information Center.” Farther down the road were several equally handsome churches offered for sale and several serving as retail establishments. Only St. Giles Cathedral remained — but as a sort of museum to the rich Scottish religious history, a history that contributed to the development of the revolutionary ideas of modern democracy and free-market capitalism. Sadly, the world-changing ideas born of the Scottish Enlightenment are barely recognized in their own country.

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NATIONAL NEWS USA Comments turned off

The Obama Administration’s Uranium One Scandal Not only the Clintons are implicated in a uranium deal with the Russians that compromised national-security interests. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on October 21st, 2017

Let’s put the Uranium One scandal in perspective: The cool half-million bucks the Putin regime funneled to Bill Clinton was five times the amount it spent on those Facebook ads — the ones the media-Democrat complex ludicrously suggests swung the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.

The Facebook-ad buy, which started in June 2015 — before Donald Trump entered the race — was more left-wing agitprop (ads pushing hysteria on racism, immigration, guns, etc.) than electioneering. The Clintons’ own long-time political strategist Mark Penn estimates that just $6,500 went to actual electioneering. (You read that right: 65 hundred dollars.) By contrast, the staggering $500,000 payday from a Kremlin-tied Russian bank for a single speech was part of a multi-million-dollar influence-peddling scheme to enrich the former president and his wife, then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton. At the time, Russia was plotting — successfully — to secure U.S. government approval for its acquisition of Uranium One, and with it, tens of billions of dollars in U.S. uranium reserves.

Here’s the kicker: The Uranium One scandal is not only, or even principally, a Clinton scandal. It is an Obama-administration scandal.

The Clintons were just doing what the Clintons do: cashing in on their “public service.” The Obama administration, with Secretary Clinton at the forefront but hardly alone, was knowingly compromising American national-security interests. The administration green-lighted the transfer of control over one-fifth of American uranium-mining capacity to Russia, a hostile regime — and specifically to Russia’s state-controlled nuclear-energy conglomerate, Rosatom. Worse, at the time the administration approved the transfer, it knew that Rosatom’s American subsidiary was engaged in a lucrative racketeering enterprise that had already committed felony, extortion, fraud, and money-laundering offenses.

The Obama administration also knew that congressional Republicans were trying to stop the transfer. Consequently, the Justice Department concealed what it knew. DOJ allowed the racketeering enterprise to continue compromising the American uranium industry rather than commencing a prosecution that would have scotched the transfer. Prosecutors waited four years before quietly pleading the case out for a song, in violation of Justice Department charging guidelines. Meanwhile, the administration stonewalled Congress, reportedly threatening an informant who wanted to go public.

Obama’s ‘Reset’

To understand what happened here, we need to go back to the beginning.

The first-tier military arsenal of Putin’s Russia belies its status as a third-rate economic power. For well over a decade, the regime has thus sought to develop and exploit its capacity as a nuclear-energy producer. Naïvely viewing Russia as a “strategic partner” rather than a malevolent competitor, the Bush administration made a nuclear-cooperation agreement with the Kremlin in May 2008. That blunder, however, was tabled before Congress could consider it. That is because Russia, being Russia, invaded Georgia.

In 2009, notwithstanding this aggression (which continues to this day with Russia’s occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia), President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton signaled the new administration’s determination to “reset” relations with Moscow. In this reset, renewed cooperation and commerce in nuclear energy would be central.

There had been such cooperation and commerce since the Soviet Union imploded. In 1992, the administration of President George H. W. Bush agreed with the nascent Russian federation that U.S. nuclear providers would be permitted to purchase uranium from Russia’s disassembled nuclear warheads (after it had been down-blended from its highly enriched weapons-grade level). The Russian commercial agent responsible for the sale and transportation of this uranium to the U.S. is the Kremlin-controlled company “Tenex” (formally, JSC Techsnabexport). Tenex is a subsidiary of Rosatom.

Tenex (and by extension, Rosatom) have an American arm called “Tenam USA.” Tenam is based in Bethesda, Md. Around the time President Obama came to power, the Russian official in charge of Tenam was Vadim Mikerin.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany: Full Censorship Now Official Courts Rewrite History by Judith Bergman

By on October 21st, 2017

Germany has made no secret of its desire to see its new law copied by the rest of the EU.

When employees of social media companies are appointed as the state’s private thought police and given the power to shape the form of current political and cultural discourse by deciding who shall be allowed to speak and what to say, and who shall be shut down, free speech becomes nothing more than a fairy tale. Or is that perhaps the point?

Perhaps fighting “Islamophobia” is now a higher priority than fighting terrorism?

A new German law introducing state censorship on social media platforms came into effect on October 1, 2017. The new law requires social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to censor their users on behalf of the German state. Social media companies are obliged to delete or block any online “criminal offenses” such as libel, slander, defamation or incitement, within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint — regardless of whether or the content is accurate or not. Social media companies receive seven days for more complicated cases. If they fail to do so, the German government can fine them up to 50 million euros for failing to comply with the law.

This state censorship makes free speech subject to the arbitrary decisions of corporate entities that are likely to censor more than absolutely necessary, rather than risk a crushing fine. When employees of social media companies are appointed as the state’s private thought police and given the power to shape the form of current political and cultural discourse by deciding who shall be allowed to speak and what to say, and who shall be shut down, free speech becomes nothing more than a fairy tale. Or is that perhaps the point?

Meanwhile, the district court in Munich recently sentenced a German journalist, Michael Stürzenberger, to six months in jail for posting on his Facebook page a historical photo of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, shaking the hand of a senior Nazi official in Berlin in 1941. The prosecution accused Stürzenberger of “inciting hatred towards Islam” and “denigrating Islam” by publishing the photograph. The court found Stürzenberger guilty of “disseminating the propaganda of anti-constitutional organizations”. While the mutual admiration that once existed between al-Husseini and German Nazis is an undisputed historical fact, now evidently history is being rewritten by German courts. Stürzenberger has appealed the verdict.

A German court recently sentenced journalist Michael Stürzenberger (pictured) to six months in jail for posting on his Facebook page a historical photo of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, shaking the hand of a Nazi official in Berlin, in 1941. The prosecution accused Stürzenberger of “inciting hatred towards Islam” and “denigrating Islam” by publishing the photograph. (Image Source: PI News video screenshot)

Germany has made no secret of its desire to see its new law copied by the rest of the EU, which already has a similar code of conduct for social media giants. The EU Justice Commissioner, Vera Jourova, recently said she might be willing to legislate in the future if the voluntary code of conduct does not produce the desired results. She said, however, that the voluntary code was working “relatively” well, with Facebook removing 66.5% of the material they had been notified was “hateful” between December and May this year. Twitter removed 37.4%, and YouTube took action on 66% of the notifications from users.

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NATIONAL NEWS USA Comments turned off

FBI Arrested Russian Spies Getting Close to Hillary Clinton in Lead-Up to Uranium One Deal By Tyler O’Neil

By on October 21st, 2017

In 2010, the FBI arrested ten Russian spies as part of “Operation Ghost Stories.” According to a top FBI official, the agency had to act quickly because the “deep cover” agents had come very close to “a sitting US cabinet member.” They had already infiltrated then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s inner circle, befriending a Democratic fundraiser close to Clinton.

Clinton’s Russian connections have attracted more scrutiny following recent revelations of an FBI investigation into Russian company Rosatom, which gained control of 20 percent of U.S. uranium in the 2010 Uranium One deal. The fact that the Russian spies attempted to infiltrate Clinton’s network just before the Uranium One deal has been previously reported by PJ Media’s Pat Poole, and the connection to the recent revelations of the FBI investigation into Rosatom was reported by Center for Security Policy analyst J. Michael Waller in The Daily Caller Friday.

“We were becoming very concerned,” Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI’s assistant director of counterintelligence, told the BBC in 2012. “They were getting close enough to a sitting US cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue.”

There are many reasons to suggest Clinton was this “sitting US cabinet member.” In June 2010, Barbara Morea, president of Morea Financial Services in Manhattan, confirmed that “Cynthia Murphy,” Russian External Intelligence Service (SVR) spy Lidiya Guryeva, was a longtime employee and vice president at the company. The company managed the finances of Alan Patricof, one of New York’s top Democratic donors, who fundraised for Clinton’s Senate and presidential campaigns.

Federal court documents reported that Guryeva had “several work-related personal meetings” with “a prominent New York-based financier.” The complaint added that Guryeva and her husband reported back to Moscow that the financier was “prominent in politics,” “an active fundraiser for” a major political party, and a “personal friend” of a current Cabinet official. Patricof fit every one of these descriptions.

Orders from Moscow suggested Patricof might “provide [Guryeva] with remarks re US foreign policy, ‘roumors’ [sic] about White house internal ‘kitchen…'” Worse, the court document also noted that Guryeva “explained to [her husband] that he would not be able to work at the top echelons of certain parts of the United States Government — the State Department, for example.”

While the documents never mention Hillary Clinton by name, the evidence all points in her direction. Guryeva was focused on Patricof, a close friend of Clinton’s, sought to gain information about the White House from a source close to Clinton, and expressed a familiarity with the State Department, the agency Hillary Clinton ran.

Patricof confirmed that he appeared to have been the target, and said he had never talked politics with Guryeva.

Clinton spokesmen at the time insisted that the secretary of State was not the Russian spy ring’s target, but Figliuzzi’s comment suggests a fear that the SVR agents would get too close to a certain cabinet member.

The FBI arrested the Russian spies on June 28, 2010, one day before Bill Clinton gave a speech in Moscow to a Kremlin-connected investment bank, Renaissance Capital. Clinton received $500,000 for this speech. CONTINUE AT SITE

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POLITICS Comments turned off

A fresh round of insults for Trump-supporters from George W. Bush By J. Marsolo

By on October 21st, 2017

The Democrats viciously attacked George W. Bush during his presidency as an illegitimate president because of the Florida recount. The Democrats and their cheerleaders in the media and Hollywood called him stupid and a moron and compared him to Hitler. Harry Reid called him a loser and declared the Iraq war lost.

The Republican and conservative voters stuck with Bush, re-elected him in 2004, and supported his policies.

After his election, Obama blamed all the problems with the economy, war, and everything else on Bush. Bush remained silent. He never defended himself, nor did he criticize Obama for scandals such as Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS harassment of conservative groups, and racial division.

On October 19, 2017, Bush gave a speech in which he criticized President Trump and Trump voters and supporters. Bush said:

Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children.

…and…

We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism, Forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America.

Bush had no problem with the Democrats for eight years calling him stupid, a loser, and Hitler. But now he talks about “bullying, prejudice, cruelty, and bigotry” without having the courage to say who is doing the bullying, prejudice, cruelty, and bigotry. Why didn’t Bush complain when Hillary called Trump supporters “deplorables,” or when Obama said those who didn’t vote for him cling to guns and religion?

Worse, Bush labels the current support for building the wall and enforcing immigration laws as “nativism,” which means that the Trump-supporters who support enforcing our immigration laws are nativists. Nativism meant promoting the rights and interests of citizens, but now it has acquired a pejorative meaning as being anti-immigrant and bigoted, which is how Bush meant it without distinguishing between legal and illegal immigration.

Maybe Bush does not understand that enforcing our immigration laws, such as building a wall, is aimed at stopping illegal immigration. This saves American lives and secures our borders. Bush casually says we have “forgotten the dynamism that immigration brought to America,” as if President Trump and his supporters wanted to stop all immigration, legal and illegal.

If this is not bad enough, Bush joined the Democrats in the “Russia collusion” drivel:

America is experiencing the sustained attempt by a hostile power to feed and exploit our country’s divisions. According to our intelligence services, the Russian government has made a project of turning Americans against each other. This effort is broad, systematic and stealthy, it’s conducted across a range of social media.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Fall of higher education By Alan Fraser Parents who continue to send their children to college and alumni who continue to contribute to them should have their heads examined. We’ve gone way beyond “this is embarrassing.”

By on October 21st, 2017

1 “Northwestern doubles its programming on ‘deconstructing masculinity'”
“The first event of this academic year in November will tackle ‘toxic masculinity’…. The program … started in spring 2016 with a grant from the U.S. Justice Department.”
https://tinyurl.com/yd966sd4

2. “Swarthmore students burn American flag on Columbus Day”
https://tinyurl.com/y8b9f74p

3. “Students storm library, shut down College Republicans meeting”
https://tinyurl.com/ydat4chq

4. “Marquette University hosts ‘Black Male Appreciation Luncheon'”
https://tinyurl.com/yapqnozh

5. “Grizzly Bigotry At The University of Montana”
https://tinyurl.com/yd6cszld

6. “200 pro-life posters torn down at Loyola Marymount University”
https://tinyurl.com/yaym9ykg

7. Marquette University, a Jesuit-run university, to host LGBT ‘Pride Prom’ in campus ballroom
https://tinyurl.com/yck7z28c

8. “Columbia University Pledges $100 Million To Campus Staff ‘Diversity'”
https://tinyurl.com/yahmdxa7

9. Eastern Illinois University’s ‘Lincoln Hall’ eyed for name change
https://tinyurl.com/y7qhvb6d

10. “Hillary Clinton in talks with Columbia University to take on professor role”
“One option under discussion is an esteemed “University Professor” role that would allow Clinton to lecture across a range of schools and departments without the requirement of a strict course load, one source said.”
https://tinyurl.com/y8v9ubk2

11. “University Refuses Research On Growing Numbers Of Trans People Who Want ‘To Go Back'”
https://tinyurl.com/yb5bqt4p

12. “Students at Cambridge University are being warned that they may have to study books with upsetting content – the plays of William Shakespeare. Lecturers claim the advice is to protect undergraduates’ mental health, even though several of the Bard’s works are known for their depiction of sex and violence.”
https://tinyurl.com/y7puxlxs

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NATIONAL NEWS USA Comments turned off

Kelly Exposes Ugliness on the Left, Limpness on the Right By Mike Sabo and Julie Ponzi

By on October 21st, 2017

Once again, the Left—in its frenzy to deploy any weapon at hand to damage President Trump—made the critical mistake of allowing us to peer behind the curtain and see what they’re really up to. https://amgreatness.com/2017/10/20/kelly-exposes-ugliness-on-the-left-limpness-on-the-right/

Democrats and their accomplices in the media attempted to gin up controversy following the deaths of four service members killed in Niger earlier this month. They pounced again after a notorious Democratic Party hack, and self-proclaimed “rock star,” Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.), said Trump’s call to one of the Gold Star families was “insensitive.”

Wilson announced with indignation that Trump told a widow of one of the slain soldiers her husband “knew what he signed up for…but when it happens, it hurts anyway.” The furrowed brows crowd populating our illustrious Democratic-media complex ran with the story, eager to tar Trump and turn Niger into his Benghazi—only this time, it would be a Benghazi that actually mattered to them.

This was not to be, however, because we no longer live in the Bush era. Trump and his team understand the importance of fighting back in the face of reckless criticism. Absorbing low blows from your political adversaries serves no good purpose when they are beyond shame.

So General John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, stepped in and gave them a much-deserved thrashing.

Kelly manfully detailed the heart-wrenching process of what happens after a member of our armed services dies in combat. He spoke of how a family is notified—an experience with which he is all too familiar, both as a commander and as a father who has lost a son in Afghanistan. He defended Trump from the media’s attacks but, even more important, he eviscerated the credibility and the honor of Rep. Wilson and her characteristically self-serving misrepresentations. (Misrepresentations that have been refuted now by other families, too.)

After doing so, he took us back to a place of honor—back to the “stones” of Arlington National Cemetery that mark the final resting places of the finest men and women our great nation has ever produced. These stories about the sacrifices made by our men and women in the military (and the sacrifices of their families) should shame us all as we gobble up this media-created spectacle. How can we reflect on these incredible acts of valor and then wish to wallow in the latest attempt to exploit every misfortune and turn it into an anti-Trump talking point?

Regarding what Trump said to the widow, Kelly maintained it was nothing more than advice he gave the president prior to the call:

Well, let me tell you what I told him. Let me tell you what my best friend, Joe Dunford, told me—because he was my casualty officer. He said, Kel, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1 percent. He knew what the possibilities were because we’re at war. And when he died, in the four cases we’re talking about, Niger, and my son’s case in Afghanistan—when he died, he was surrounded by the best men on this Earth: his friends. That’s what the President tried to say to four families the other day.

Kelly also hit back hard against Wilson’s despicable attacks:

I was stunned when I came to work yesterday morning, and broken-hearted at what I saw a member of Congress doing. A member of Congress who listened in on a phone call from the President of the United States to a young wife, and in his way tried to express that opinion—that he’s a brave man, a fallen hero, he knew what he was getting himself into because he enlisted. There’s no reason to enlist; he enlisted. And he was where he wanted to be, exactly where he wanted to be, with exactly the people he wanted to be with when his life was taken.

If Wilson had any part of character or virtue, she would silently accept Kelly’s damning judgment. Instead, and unbelievably, she reacted to Kelly’s emotional presser by stating that he was simply “trying to keep his job.” “He will say anything,” she said. And this newly-minted “rock star” then debased herself further:

Her appalling words are surpassed only by her abominable behavior. In truth, she ought to resign immediately.

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